How Slow Horses actress Kristin Scott Thomas came to love TV after film and stage career

Thomas, who has appeared in films from The English Patient to Random Hearts, talks about working with Gary Oldman and acting at 60 years old

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Kristin Scott Thomas as MI5 second-in-command Diana Taverner in a still from Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. The award-winning actress talks about finally working in TV, and acting at 60. Photo: TNS

Published: 6:15pm, 13 Oct 2024

Ten years ago, when asked if she had considered following Maggie Smith from Gosford Park (in which they both starred) to Downton Abbey, Kristin Scott Thomas could not have been more clear: She had no interest in television.

“It just goes on and on,” she said. “I get terribly bored. Series bore me.”

Five years later, she mercifully changed her mind. Not about Downton Abbey – “I do not regret anything with a corset” she says now – but about television, first with a brief yet spellbinding appearance in Fleabag, but most importantly with Slow Horses, in which she plays MI5 second-in-command Diana Taverner alongside Gary Oldman’s sidelined but still tricky operative Jackson Lamb.

There are few cinematic experiences as exquisite as watching Scott Thomas face off with Oldman. Or anyone else, for that matter.

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And after two years of critical raves, a devoted fan base and oddly muted marketing, Slow Horses ended its fourth season on Apple TV+ on October 9 as the show everyone is talking about. Including Scott Thomas.

“I’m watching it as if I weren’t in it,” she says during a recent interview over Zoom. “The plots are so complicated and have so many twists and turns, I get completely lost. ‘Oh right, I forgot that happens.’ “It is thrilling to watch and really enjoy it – like, ‘this is really good’.”